Authoress's Notes: YAY! I have reviews! People are actually reading this!
Disclaimer still applies. Warnings still apply. Oh, and this chapter has a lot of torture in it, hence the really pretty name. What can I say? I was in a mood when I was writing this chapter. I wanted blood. And I have Authoress Powers, so I got what I asked for…
Well, I think if you got this far you've noticed how I am dealing with the Yami Bakura/Bakura relationship. I don't really like the idea of reasonless beating, so I have warped that aspect to where hitting and punching can actually be useful. I mean, Yami Bakura is stuck with Bakura, and beating is not going to solve any of his problems. Yami Bakura is smarter than people realize, and I don't think he lives to be an antagonist. Thank you.
This is a record for me. Over twenty thousand words in about four days; I really like writing this story. I hope my humanizing efforts are working…
GO SADISTIC KILLING SPREE!
The girl with no eyes laughed.
"Mai," she called. The call somehow made its way through the castle to the laborer working in the kitchen.
Five minutes later, she started talking. Her voice was a hand bashing a skull on the rock, filled with dangerous energy and murder. "It is coming. Can you feel it?"
"Milady?"
"There was a prophecy when I came to power. It said one would overthrow me, one more powerful than I, but that cannot be possible, as my power grows every day, and no one has arisen to defeat me. But there has been a disturbance in the camps."
Mai remembered the camps. She was lucky she had been chosen to work here instead of there.
"A girl escaped from the graveyard shift. No one knows how or why, but she has escaped. Her name was Téa. There is some great power at work here that could expose us all. It could very well destroy everyone who fights."
The slave laborer opened her mouth. "I thought you had blinded the people. There are still resistors after all this time?"
"Yes," she replied. "There are still resistors, only I cannot feel them. They cannot possibly be human beings, therefore are out of my reach. It would take a great deal of my energy to capture them."
The eyeless sockets were once again underneath the flat lids. "I sense your doubt, Mai. You are losing your faith in our authoritarian dictatorship."
"No, milady. I am not losing faith. Tell me what you want me to do and I will do it." Mai did not want to die. She hated her life, but she did not want to die.
The eyeless girl smiled sadistically. "Jump out the window."
No response.
"If you value your life, you will jump out the window."
Mai did nothing.
The room shimmered until there was a table sitting there. The wind began to howl through the windows and pushed Mai onto the table. The eyeless girl was on her in a flash, securing the doomed slave girl onto the rack.
A knife slid across Mai's arm, and she gasped from the pain. There was not enough blood for it to be fatal. The eyeless girl let out a long, low hiss.
"Em esoppo ohw esoth ot egassem a," she screamed.
The knife pointed at Mai and her entire body was suddenly alive with pain. She looked at the cut, wondering how it could be so painful, and gasped as the blood left her veins and traveled to the air above her head. Her pale face gazed at the eyeless girl with disbelief. Droplets of blood were hanging in midair, suspended…
"Théa-Rouge…" she whispered, murmuring the eyeless girl's name.
The said villain laughed at the slave girl, the lifeblood leaving the girl with every breath she took, her heart beating and trying to circulate the thinned blood. It was too easy… way too easy… She said so and laughed at the helpless girl, who responded with a wordless cry of agony.
"I would have killed you eventually. You are lucky I waited until I was in a good mood, Mai." The cloud of blood over the tortured body was seething.
She threw the knife through the cloud. It pierced Mai's chest cleanly. A bloodcurdling scream ran through the girl's mouth. The blood fell on the girl and splattered onto the floor.
"Rain…"
Fate awoke from her slumber in the middle of the afternoon. The scream from her dream chilled her to the core, but it wasn't only the scream.
The eyes stared at her and threatened to find her. She could feel the girl in her mind somehow, laughing at her, though she knew it was only her paranoia. But still… no eyes… that blood…
Desperately trying to think of something else, she walked over to Yugi's bed and smoothed aside his bangs. Yes, he was cute, naïve… innocent… but there was more to him than that. She stared at the puzzle around his neck, briefly wondering what it had to do with anything. It was always there.
Sometimes she thought it was someone else talking instead of Yugi. It was like there was some other presence inside him, something that came out of the Millennium Puzzle. And there was also something wrong with Bakura. One minute the guy was nice, gentile, and kind; then he got a distant look in his eyes and ran away as if he was afraid he would get someone hurt.
It reminded her of the comical scene in the classroom when she had been "sleeping." Despite the confident air of Yugi's other side, he was still the same person, blissfully unaware that there was a deeper meaning to those card games and disappearances.
Fate's parents had taught her about the true meaning.
Her parents…
The tears welled up and the sadness threatened to eat away at her soul, leaving nothing, being nothing more than darkness… then she was crying, and there was no color in the room. The deep reds had faded until there was almost no color at all, and before her eyes she could see everything crumble into dust.
Yugi was still lying there, but there wasn't just Yugi. She saw a shadow behind him, and as she looked, she saw the shadow become more like someone else.
"There are two Yugis…" she whispered.
Fate looked around the room and felt herself rise from the tattered bed. Some sort of vermin squeaked and scurried under the blanket; she thought she saw something.
"See beyond," said a voice. It sounded like Fate, only… younger.
There was a child standing in front of her, and they were in a grassy field. Both Yugis were lying somewhere in it, but she did not look for long.
Fate looked into the child's eyes and saw… herself.
Clad in a simple white robe, her hair coming into her eyes playfully…
A small hand reached for the larger hand.
"Play with me."
"I'm not a child anymore. I don't play games. There are no games."
A could passed over the child's face. "True, but it is wise to pretend. All of this is just one big masquerade, one grand illusion thrown by the Queen of Spades." She held up a card, her childlike eyes suddenly devoid of all innocence and compassion. "Play."
Fate looked at the card and saw the demented, eyeless girl. "I-I can't…"
"Why can't you play with me?"
"I'm too afraid. She'll find me, and it's not a game. She'll do to me what she did to that other girl. I can't risk my life—
"Even if it is to save others?" the child mimicked the older girl's surprise. "You aren't as stupid as you seem. Think with your heart instead of your mind. Think with our heart."
Something underneath the white cloak began to glow, and it filled the child's insides with a lurid light. Fate felt the same boiling energy inside her chest, somewhere where her heart should be…
"The Heart rules all."
"But what is your name? I need to know who you are!"
"I am your Fate."
Fate would have asked more, but she couldn't. There was something holding her to the real world, something very intense and somehow… threatening. Yes, whatever was taking her back was threatened by something. It was calling her name.
"Fate! Wake up! Fate! He locked us in! I can't get out!"
"Huh? What are you talking about?"
Fate rose from the bed with sleepy eyes. She felt like she had been submerged and her head hurt. She wished she had some sort of painkiller.
"The room," she whispered. "It's back to normal."
Yugi didn't seem to hear her; he was in a passionate panic. "We can't get out! The door won't open! It's locked and I'm scared! He's going to come back and finish the job he started last night!"
"Yugi, it's a locked door. It's nothing special. I have the key somewhere on my person. Pegasus was kind enough to offer us someplace to hide. I escaped from that fate, and if you hadn't come here, you would be in one of the government's jail cells."
"That's a lie!"
"No, it isn't." She held up her arms and hands to show him all the barely-scabbed cuts and scrapes. "I got this from jumping out a window. They were after me and I couldn't let myself be captured, so I ran. I am the only one to ever escape capture. And I was lucky I got off with only a few scratches."
Yugi let out an exasperated growl. "You don't understand! He almost killed me!"
"Well, it is either the shady psycho or dying of starvation in a camp. I would choose Pegasus over the Queen of Spades any day!"
The short boy shook his head. "What are you talking about? She just takes people and puts them in jail when they do something wrong. Who told you about camps?"
"My family was in the Resistance. We know a lot of stuff, but it's not like we can tell the public that they're being lied to. My birth mother died fighting for what she believed in and I am going to finish what she started!"
She immediately regretted what she had said, and she heard a key turn in the lock from outside.
"I was listening to your little speech outside. It was quite moving. Thank you for the compliment," Pegasus said. "Oh, and if you want, there is food downstairs."
Yugi was seething with rage.
"What kind of food?" I asked, hoping that would briefly prevent a fight between the two. I was sure Pegasus would win.
"Um… I think I have some soda, hot dogs, and rolls."
Fate felt sickened. "I think Yugi would be interested. Do you use pesticide on your lawn?"
"What is wrong with hot dogs?"
"I'm a vegetarian."
"Oh. So then, I don't think you're pleased with my diet, either, are you? If you want, I do think I have some snack bars somewhere around the mansion. Oh well."
Fate gulped. "What exactly is your diet?"
"Oh, nothing much, just blood. I have a lot of it saved in the freezer."
She was feeling sicker every minute. Her high morals had landed her with a protector that drank human blood! At that moment, she decided she loathed her namesakes more than anything in the world.
This is the most demented thing you guys have ever done, she mumbled.
A flash of lightning followed in less than a second by a crack of thunder awoke Bakura. It was probably an hour before the sun should set, but it was already darker than midnight outside. He mentally cursed himself for falling asleep, then stood.
The next flash revealed a pale face staring at him, mere centimeters from his own identical face. The darkened face laughed and threw Bakura against the wall.
He let out a groan and wondered why he had left himself open to such a predictable attack.
"You forgot your first lesson, Bakura," Yami Bakura said coldly. "Always be alert. Letting down your guard opens you to attack."
The thunderclaps were making Bakura very, very nervous. His sister had died in a thunderstorm just like this one. The lightning came right through the window and zapped her and she died… but then again, he was only five years old… not like it really mattered to anyone that she died. Hell, they didn't even remember her…
Yami Bakura cast a worried glance at his other half. "Are you okay?"
"I like storms," Bakura said. "I just don't like it when they're so loud and the sky is so… dark and gloomy."
"Is that all?"
"Yes."
"Oh. I was beginning to think I gave you a concussion or you sustained some other brain damage… or something…"
Bakura was aware of a kick landing under his chin and snapping his head upward. He grabbed the foot as it receded and twisted until Yami Bakura was on the ground. The blood welled up in his mouth and he swallowed it; it had been a really good kick. He let his yami come closer to him before jumping up and punching him in the jaw.
Yami Bakura's eyes widened in surprise, but the gaze quickly changed to anger. Bakura's chocolate eyes closed, wondering how much it would hurt, but was surprised when no hit came. He opened his eyes and saw his yami standing, almost touching him, his fist raised for a blow.
"Oh, Bakura…" he whispered. "Only you, Bakura…"
He felt Yami Bakura kiss him. He would have screamed… if he hadn't actually enjoyed the kiss more than anything he had felt in the entire world. He kissed back.
They held each other for what seemed like hours. Bakura felt himself fall asleep in his yami's arms. He felt one final kiss before everything was reduced to darkness.
Yami Bakura's ring glowed and he merged with his lighter half. Opening his eyes, he got up from the ground and brushed himself off. He walked to the room Téa was sleeping in; she had not woken for over a day.
Bakura, wake up. This isn't the time for sleeping. I know you can wake up.
I'm tired, though… I'm so cold…
I need you conscious, Bakura. I need you conscious! You have to listen to me! The cold doesn't matter. Stay awake. Look through my eyes!
Yami Bakura could smell her blood from where he stood at the door. Making his own physical form took a lot of energy, which was its own form of blood. Her blood's scent was almost maddening because it was so sweet, but there was another smell that was quickly overpowering it.
He looked at her neck and saw the blood flowing through the arteries. Bakura let out a cry from inside his mind. Don't hurt her!
I won't.
Before he even registered moving, Yami Bakura was kneeling beside the bed. Téa's neck was before him, almost inviting him, teasing his control. He looked at her face and brushed his hand across her forehead. It was cold, but she was not dead.
Hot, warm blood was rushing into his mouth in but a few seconds. He held her close to him, savoring the thick liquid, but then he pushed her away. Something in her blood was not human; it reminded him of when Bakura had been given the blood. He had been sick for a few days, just like her.
"That's impossible!" he hissed to himself. Blood was on his lips and at her throat. He pressed his fingers against it and stopped the bleeding. The blood never lies.
Damn, he thought. What am I supposed to do now?
What have you done? You didn't drink from her, did you? You said you wouldn't hurt her! What's going on?
I didn't hurt her. Someone already did.
"Téa, wake up." He did not want to do this right now. "Téa! Get up now."
Slowly, she opened her eyes, not totally awake, but not totally asleep, either. At least she was waking up. "Bakura…?"
"No. I'm not Bakura, but I'm someone like him. I want you to get up now and come outside with me. We're not going far."
He was the master of machines, the great God of Technology. No computer in the world stood a chance against him. No one could compete with his technological superiority. He could make holograms that were so real that you couldn't tell they weren't until it was too late.
Once, a hologram had even killed someone.
It hadn't been his fault. They had been careless with it, treating it like it wasn't there, but the real technological genius behind it made the holograms even feel real. Even a holographic claw could kill when he turned off the safety.
The man had just been getting in the way.
The cold-eyed teenager walked into his giant computer room, feeling comfort as soon as he walked in the door. He was safe now. No one could get to him in the computer room, not that anyone would dare tamper with his genius.
"I was wondering when you would get here," someone said. He felt surprised, not only because someone had gotten into his safe place, but also because the person had been waiting for him to show up. He hadn't been warned of another presence.
A girl got out of the chair. He recognized her instantly as one of the kids at school, though he hadn't seen her in days. She was staring at him cruelly, almost teasing him with the ease she had broken into his house. He briefly considered having her arrested, but thought there might be some reason why she allowed herself to be caught by him in his own computer room. He had to admit, she had guts…
"My name is Fate Légend. You are Seto Kaiba, correct?"
"What do you want?"
She walked over to him until she was standing in his personal space. "I have a proposition. I know what you are doing here and I know you don't like the government. You have been hacking into their systems for months to do whatever you can to stop them."
"Have you come on behalf of the government?"
"No. Maxamillion Pegasus."
"What does he want with me?"
"I come on behalf of him, but I am also coming for myself. I want the government to go down, and I know you have several advanced viruses that can help us."
"So does your boss."
"I never said he was my boss. I just said I was coming on behalf of him. I owe him a favor. The point is that you have the best of everything, and I want to know the exact location of the floating castle. We have already tried, and we can't get into it. I was hoping that you would have the hacking capabilities to help me."
Seto Kaiba gave her a glare. "What is in it for me?"
"The Queen of Spades is going down."
He looked at her. She showed no signs of emotion, and he thought she may have been imitating his own expression to try to annoy him, but she did not laugh or show any signs of mockery. He did want to destroy the present government, but he didn't like the girl's idea of bringing down the main base.
"It isn't a good idea. I can hack into it, but it will take hours, and I do not want to take the risk of being discovered. I prefer causing other disturbances that will not get me noticed," he told her. He reached for his watch and pretended to check the time, but he was really wondering what kind of hologram monster he could use to kill the intruder. She knew too much.
He pressed a button and watched a monster coalesce out of the air behind her. He smiled smugly and watched her. "Maybe there is something I could do…"
The grotesque hand wrapped itself around her, and the smell of rotting flesh came through the air. The girl gasped and turned around, facing the biggest monster she had ever seen in her entire life. Seto Kaiba smiled at her. "You underestimate my resources, little girl, and you are lucky you meet your end so soon."
Its claw went right through her midsection. She screamed at the top of her lung as he pulled her forward, blood falling on the floor, her eyes filled with pain. He listened to her pathetic screams and watched the entire display coldly. He would need to call someone in to clean up the mess before he started working.
The monster reached into her chest and pulled out not a heart, but something made of gold. He growled and threw it aside. Kaiba stared at it with a detached sort of interest. Yes, it was something that was meant to be a heart.
Fate's body convulsed as if it were going through a seizure. Blood was coming out of every single hole in her body, covering the floor, soaking his shoes. The body fell to the floor, still jerking, and then went still.
He called the hologram back to where it belonged in his seemingly harmless watch. Another button was pressed and some unlucky servant came in through the door, gasped at the corpse, and looked at Kaiba as if waiting for orders.
"Clean the blood off the floor. Find a box and put the body in it. Bring it to Maxamillion Pegasus. He should have known better than to send someone to me; she knew too much. It was dangerous. If you do exactly as I say, you may live, but if you don't, I will kill you where you stand."
He looked at the golden heart. I will keep this, Fate, if you don't mind…
Kaiba walked out of the room with the blood-covered object in his hand. He took it to the bathroom and washed the blood away from it. He realized it had been meant to function as a heart, and he smiled to himself. "I wonder how many years it kept her alive. Well, I suppose she served her purpose."
Pegasus was pissed.
Pegasus did not get mad easily.
But when he did, even the most innocent child wasn't safe.
"WHAT?" he screamed at the top of his lungs. Then he grabbed the flabbergasted guy who had the audacity to deliver that innocent girl's body here. She hadn't even done anything and Kaiba had killed her like a… torture toy.
This idiot was going to pay.
Yugi, who was trying to use the stove for the first time in his life, watched as a dangerously sober Pegasus dragged a screaming middle-aged man toward a door and opened it. Yugi was very surprised, as he thought Pegasus was Mr. Nice. Unfortunately, Mr. Nice decided to leave for… somewhere else.
"What is going on? Who is that?" Yugi asked.
"That stupid son of a bitch named Kaiba killed Fate. He didn't just kill her. Her body is going to be buried closed-casket."
With that, Pegasus slammed the door. He wanted to get drunk. He couldn't drink because he was a vampire. That's where the pawn came in. That guy would get drunk, and the alcohol content in his blood would make Pegasus drunk.
Pegasus hadn't felt like getting drunk since several years ago, before he was made a vampire. He had been about nineteen and the love of his life had died. After that, he went to Egypt and when he came back he started getting drunk because it made him see stuff that no sober person would ever see.
Well, his drunken days ended two weeks before he became a vampire when he discovered that the love of his life had been seeing someone else and the guy had killed her because he had found out she was married.
He chained the unfortunate soul to the wall. "You are getting drunk. Now." Pegasus took out a vintage wine bottle that had been keeping for about a hundred years. It was sweet wine, as he hadn't drunk anything else but sweet, for he didn't like the sour taste. He even had wine made for him by a grape juice company so it would be sweet enough for him.
The guy was forced to drink the entire bottle. Pegasus artfully slashed the man's wrist in a non-fatal place that would hurt. He remembered this from the depression he suffered when he was about fifteen or so; he was lucky the psychiatrist got to him in time.
He pressed his lips to the wound and drank the blood, feeling the alcoholic poison inside it, the alcohol that would make him feel really good. He flashed the guy a smile, blood on his lips, and took out an empty canvas. Some of the blood decided to dribble down his chin and onto his expensive ruffled shirt.
Not that he cared at the moment.
He took out a paintbrush and dipped it in the bloody puddle that was forming on the floor. The wound would stop bleeding in about another minute. He knew that from experience. He decided to begin the painting, and spread the blood across the canvas. It soaked into the material, staining the material, and with each stroke Pegasus felt better.
That blood was good.
He slashed the man's cheek next, precision being his key, and the slow cut made the man gasp and almost faint. He already lost about a pint of blood, and he had never lost a great amount of blood before. Pegasus recognized the pain.
It was the last night he had gotten drunk and he was walking home. It was maybe one in the morning, a few weeks before the curfew had been put in place. Everything was gradually being squeezed out of the public. The vampire would have killed him then if he hadn't seen the Eye, and he was left outside the front gates. One of his servants found him the following morning and brought him in.
The pain had been almost too much to bear.
"Oh? Does that hurt? I hope it does. Please tell me it hurts."
A scream of affirmation.
"Good. It would have worried me if it didn't. Would you like me to cauterize the wounds for you? I have a really nice hot poker heating up right now. You would like that, wouldn't you? Brilliant!"
The hot poker stabbed the cuts all over the guy. Pegasus licked his lips and smelled the burning flesh. He fed on the screams like they were blood, soaking them in, and went back to paint the picture.
"It is so satisfying to break the soul, isn't it? But I will enjoy breaking both your soul and your body. Yes… I will have a lot of fun with you tonight…" He lashed out with the hot poker again. The guy didn't scream. He just wept.
"But my kids. I have kids. I have a family. I can't let them down."
"You should have thought of that before you accepted Kaiba's request. Then again, we all make mistakes."
After about another half hour, Pegasus was done toying with him. He had enough cold blood on the floor for the painting and it was totally finished. He hoped Kaiba-boy would like it. The doomed man would not stop crying.
He kissed the throat softly, then drove his fangs in with a ferocity that made the man scream. All too soon, it was over. Pegasus leaned against the wall beside the guy, the blood dribbling from his mouth. His eyes glazed over and he sat there for what seemed like hours before he finally came to.
"Oh. My. God."
Pegasus just realized what he had done. There was blood all over his hands. He had never done this before, not even when he was angry, but the sight of that dead body when he opened the box…
"Get a prostitute next time, Kaiba-boy," he mumbled.
The Queen of Spades knew everything. And she was pleased.